{"id":670583,"date":"2026-10-06T21:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=670583"},"modified":"2026-10-06T17:46:07","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T15:46:07","slug":"big-changes-at-dstv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/broadcasting\/670583-big-changes-at-dstv.html","title":{"rendered":"Big changes at DStv"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

South Africa’s top pay-TV service DStv looks very different one year after the takeover of its parent company, MultiChoice, by Groupe Canal+.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The French media giant assumed control of MultiChoice in September 2025, following approvals of the acquisition by the Competition Commission and Independent Communications Authority of South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company had started a creeping takeover of the South African Pay-TV giant years earlier, gradually increasing its shareholding before triggering a mandatory buyout offer in 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The MultiChoice that Canal+ ultimately acquired was a far cry from the money printer it had been before it began facing true competition from international video streaming services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the past year, Canal+ CEO Maxime Saada and Canal+ Africa boss David Mignot have spearheaded a major cost-cutting and product simplification strategy to return MultiChoice to profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Realising these “synergies” has included closing certain business units, reducing headcount, and trimming its African content production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps the biggest move was shutting down the struggling Showmax video streaming service at the end of April 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The entity had run up over R9 billion in trading losses since its relaunch in partnership with Comcast in 2023. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The move has raised concern in the entertainment industry about MultiChoice cutting down investment in local content. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of the conditions set by the Competition Commission, Canal+ is not allowed to retrench staff in South Africa until 2028.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, through voluntary severance packages, the company has downsized the workforce at its Randburg headquarters. As of June 2026, about 312 staff had taken the packages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Customer-facing changes have included some channel adjustments outside MultiChoice’s control and others that were likely driven by Canal+’s cost-cutting measures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Firstly, Paramount wound down its linear TV operations in Africa at the end of 2025, resulting in the closure of BET Africa, CBS Justice, CBS Reality, and MTV Base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just a few weeks later, there was some good news for Access subscribers: three channels from higher-end bouquets \u2014 WWE, Trace Gospel, and Trace Ngoma \u2014 were added to their subscriptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DStv packages restructured with a new lick of paint<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
David Mignot, Canal+ Africa CEO<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The restructuring affected channels such as KykNet Lekker, M-Net Movies 1, Mzansi Bioskop, and Mzansi Music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These were shut down, with their content rolled into the schedules of other channels, except for KykNet Lekker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KykNet Lekker was a channel of primarily older content, which was exclusive to DStv Access. Those subscribers now receive the KykNet & kie channel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Premium and Compact Plus customers have lost the most channels and also lost access to sought-after Warner Bros. and HBO content in June 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biggest change came on 16 September 2026, just over a week before the first anniversary of Canal+’s acquisition of MultiChoice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company completely overhauled DStv’s packages, following through on its ambition to simplify the pay-TV operator’s products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All but its EasyView and Premium packages were renamed, alongside a handful of channel adjustments. Access became Starter, and Family became Select.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Compact was replaced with a more sport-focused Sports plan, while Compact Plus was grandfathered, and a new Movies & Series bouquet was introduced in its place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

DStv also refreshed the look of its website and app, replacing the familiar blue colour scheme and background with black.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bouquets are no longer prefixed with “DStv” either. Instead, they are simply called Starter, Select, Movies & Series, and Premium, with fonts and colours similar to Canal+’s packages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Canal+ has indicated that it plans to roll out its own streaming app in MultiChoice markets, the company insisted these changes were not part of a stealthy rebranding exercise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The table below summarises the timeline of major changes at MultiChoice and DStv since Canal+ took over its parent company roughly a year ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Date<\/th>Development<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
September 2025<\/td>Africa leadership team appointed, with David Mignot leading Canal+ Africa<\/td><\/tr>
October 2025<\/td>DStv Coins rewards system launched<\/td><\/tr>
November 2025<\/td>Entry-level decoder prices reduced from R699 to R299<\/td><\/tr>
December 2025<\/td>MultiChoice delisted from the JSE<\/td><\/tr>
January 2026<\/td>DStv cuts four channels

Three channels expanded to Access subscribers<\/td><\/tr>
February 2026<\/td>Two-way bill-splitting added, effectively encouraging account sharing<\/td><\/tr>
April 2026<\/td>DStv prices frozen

Showmax shut down and select content migrated to main streaming app<\/td><\/tr>
June 2026<\/td>Most HBO and Warner Bros. content dropped <\/td><\/tr>
June to July 2026<\/td>DStv broadcasts and streams all FIFA World Cup matches on Access and Family packages for the first time <\/td><\/tr>
September 2026<\/td>Four local channels axed

Bouquet overhaul with new Starter, Sports, Select, and Movies & Series packages, including alignment of satellite and streaming prices and new sports-focused package <\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It has been a year since French media giant assumed control of DStv owner MultiChoice. Here are the major developments at the South African pay-TV giant since then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":666341,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"posted","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"2107546692929122804","_sma_facebook_post_id":"120850204637381_1521800003305311","_sma_instagram_post_id":"17909887542560974","_sma_threads_post_id":"18077960525402735","_sma_x_attempts":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[21383,101558,85,475,98139,32140],"class_list":["post-670583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-broadcasting","tag-canal","tag-david-mignot","tag-dstv","tag-multichoice","tag-paramount-africa","tag-showmax"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670583"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670583"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":670874,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670583\/revisions\/670874"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}